Advances in communication infrastructures and devices have turned standard communication devices into valuable tools. Device users can communicate with each other, and with other electronic devices, over networks ranging from Local Area Networks (LANs) to wide reaching Global Area Networks (GANs) such as the Internet. Wireless communications devices such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants and the like are often designed to interface with such networks as well as with their local surroundings using short-range wireless technologies.
Both landline and wireless computing systems are presently capable of receiving information in a variety of content types and formats, from a variety of different sources including networked sources. Landline systems, such as desktop computers, workstations, terminals, etc. generally utilize commercially-available Web browsers in order to interact with various kinds of Internet resources. This type of browser is generally a software program stored locally at the client device. In the Internet context, web content created with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or other language can be read by such Web browsers. Analogous technologies exist for communicating landline content via wireless devices.
There is an ever-increasing demand for the consumption of Internet or other network-sourced content on smaller devices such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants, laptop computers and the like. For example, the popularity and resulting proliferation of these portable and/or hand-held wireless devices has fueled the need to make content traditionally available to desktop and other landline computing systems also available to mobile device users. Today, these wireless devices not only facilitate voice communication, but also messaging, multimedia communications, e-mail, Internet browsing, and access to a wide range of wireless applications and services.
As a result of the proliferation of wireless technologies, a multitude of different device types having different capabilities are currently available. A vast quantity of applications and services has become available to these devices, and the quantity of such applications and services available to these devices will continue to grow. In addition to new applications/services being available to these devices, the corresponding software residing on these devices may be subject to revisions, version upgrades and the like. However, the resulting fragmentation of systems, operating systems, networks, terminal capabilities, and/or other distinctive characteristics has caused some fragmentation in the use of services. When a device user attempts to download or otherwise receive content, service applications, software, etc., the device to which such data is targeted may not always result in a successful download, and/or may not be compatible in that the downloaded data does not operate correctly on the device. Currently, the user has no way of knowing whether his or her device is likely to successfully download the data or to successfully execute/utilize the application, content or other data.
Accordingly, there is a need in the communications industry for a manner of notifying prospective data consumers of the likelihood of successfully downloading, executing or otherwise using the content, application, software or other data to which he or she is seeking to acquire. The present invention fulfills these and other needs, and offers other advantages over the prior art.